Stock Market Briefly Slammed By Hack Attack On AP’s Twitter Feed

The news service has confirmed that its Twitter account was hacked with a false report that two explosions had taken place at the White House and that President Obama had been injured. The fake news led to a brief drop of more than 100 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Stocks quickly recovered and are trading slightly up. White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “the President is fine.” AP‘s news account on Twitter has been suspended but corporate communications said on its account that it will “advise more as soon as possible.” An AP news story says that the attack “came after hackers made repeated attempts to steal the passwords of AP journalists.”